There are three well known fundamental problems in an information handling system: security, reliability, and real-time behavior. Security refers to a system's ability to prevent unauthorized agents from performing actions while permitting authorized agents to perform actions. Security is related to data protection and privacy, and especially related to digital rights management (DRM). Reliability refers to a system's robustness in handling information. Real-time behavior refers to a system's ability to update information as the information is received, enabling the system to direct or control processes. It is understood that an information handling system here is defined as a group of related components that interact to process information. An information handling system may be hardware only, software only, or a combination of hardware and software.
Traditional solutions to the foregoing-indicated three problems have emphasized on solving each problem separately. However, this approach is sub-optimal from both an architectural and an economic point of view, as it fails to exploit the synergies of the interdependence an architecture may provide.
A legacy architecture of an information handling system, that is, a traditional microprocessor and operating system structure (e.g., UNIX or Microsoft Windows running on an Intel processor), is inherently insecure and is also not scalable. Therefore, a legacy architecture applies very poorly to a distributed environment scaled both in the number of supported devices and in behavior or performance.
Thus, it would be desirable to provide an architecture for an information handling system which simultaneously addresses security, reliability, and real-time behavior problems inherent in the known art, while also solving legacy architecture scalability and security problems.